Our Urban Town a Publication of the Staten Island Urban CenterOur Urban Town is a quarterly publication that shares thought provoking, intellectually provocative, community news, ideas and opinions from Staten Island's urban neighborhoods.

#reSIStah issue​in celebration of women's history month

​the Woke reSIStah Issue Our Urban Town publishes thought provoking ideas, intellectually provocative reflections, community news, and opinions from the very people in the community who passionately live and/or work with these issues. In this Woke ReSistah Issue, Our Urban Town shares the writings of women activists on Staten Island as a tribute to the contributions of women right now in this borough. Due to space constraints, these are just a small sample of women activists doing the work on the island, but our hope is that these writings inspire readers to be or continue to be activists, to share real stories, advocate for real solutions and to fight for real for the things they believe in. In the era of WOKE and RESIST, it’s our time to be activists everywhere we go and in everything we do.Kelly Vilar,​Editor of Our Urban Town & ​CEO of Staten Island Urban Center

A “food desert,” according to the USDA, “is a low-income census tract where either a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store.” On this USDA map, you can see that Mariners Harbor, St. George, part of Rosebank, and part of Old Town met the definition in 2015.

From USDA Food Access Research Atlas,https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/go-to-the-atlas/People in food deserts either must do without fresh fruits and vegetables or else travel long distances to get fresh produce and other whole foods.And in fact, on Staten Island, they do travel long distances to buy good food. City Harvest surveyed members of two Mobile Markets (open-air free-produce distributions), three food pantries, and three health clinics and found that 42 percent of the respondents shop outside their neighborhoods (“outside” is defined as any location that is more than 10 minutes away, either walking or driving). To get to these stores, 61 percent either walk or take a bus; only 29 percent take their own cars.

But why should you need to travel outside your neighborhood to buy good food at low prices? The answer goes back to the federal government Home Owners' Loan Corporation “redlining” reports of the 1930s and 1940s.Redlining refers to the practice of banks denying mortgages to people living in minority or immigrant neighborhoods. It affected more than residential mortgages, however: Entire neighborhoods were off limits for commercial loans and mortgages, meaning that supermarkets and other large retailers bypassed those neighborhoods.The Fair Housing Act, part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, now prohibits discrimination against neighborhoods based on their racial composition. Nevertheless, when you compare the food deserts in the map earlier in this article to the redlined areas on the map below, you can see that they’re essentially the same.Each section of the redlining map has an area description that explains why a neighborhood is desirable or undesirable. During the Great Depression when these reports were compiled, Irish and Italian immigrants were seen as undesirable, and many of the descriptions imply that a neighborhood was undesirable because it was 90 percent Italian (or occasionally 5 or 10 percent Black).

The Staten Island story is not all wilted carrots and limp cabbages, however. City Harvest, the Staten Island Partnership for Community Wellness (SIPCW), the Mayor’s Office of Food Policy, and others are working to address the long-term effects of redlining on Staten Island.City Harvest delivers tractor-trailers full of free produce to Stapleton and Mariners Harbor twice a month all year long and has been working with schools, clinics, and NYCHA housing to create satellite pantries. The Staten Island Neighborhood Food Initiative (http://sinfi.org), a City Harvest project, has been identifying and promoting stores that offer fresh produce and healthy food in many Staten Island neighborhoods.The Mayor’s Office of Food Policy has partnered with Community Health Action of SI to provide 1,700 people with cards that provide savings of up to 50 percent on fresh produce and 25 to 30 percent on additional healthy food items. You can sign up at CHASI’s office at 2134 Richmond Terrace until they run out of cards.

(For more on the City’s plans for better food access, see http://healthyfoodretailnyc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-06-22-Affordability-Food-Retail-Strategy.pdf.)​SIPCW, working with the Department of Education and the Borough President’s office, has created an ambitious program to add school gardens to many of the borough’s public, charter, and private schools. To find out more, teachers, principals, and parent-coordinators should come to the Third Annual School Garden Summit, to be held on April 20 at the Michael J. Petrides School, 715 Ocean Terrace, from 8:30 a.m. to 2:40 p.m. Watch the Staten Island Grow to Give Facebook page for details.